First Motorola Droid review

Engadget just posted the first Motorola Droid review. I can’t say I agree with everything they said though, especially when with their cons. The camera plain sucks (according to pictures & video samples in the review) but :

First off, the camera is painfully slow to focus and snap pictures — and when it does, the results can be unpredictable. Strangely, the lens seems to be able to take pretty sharp macro photos (it’s even a setting in the camera app), but it struggled with getting adjusted to close subjects, even in broad daylight. Sometimes we got lucky and cranked out a decent pic, but the process was frustrating. Furthermore, the new settings Google has added to 2.0 are contained in a hard to get to and counterintuitive menu which sits to the left of your viewing area. Trying to make changes on the fly was a hassle. If this is the best the engineers at Google can do, they need to outsource this work.
Video, on the other hand, was somewhat of a pleasant surprise. The DROID is capable of shooting at a 720 x 480 resolution, and in our tests, produced watchable — if not totally shake-free — video. The phone definitely fares better in this department than with stills, and we could easily see using the DROID as a stand-in for a flip cam. You can check out a little of the action in the video below (with a surprise cameo from !!!’s Nic Offer).

In my opinion the video sample looks horrible. Why don’t they just tell it like it is ? It’s not good it’s bad.

In our tests, the nav worked excellently for the most part, though as you can see in the video above, we did run into some minor issues on our hunt for cannoli. It’s not uncommon for a GPS unit to send you the wrong way down a one way street, and maybe it was just unlucky coincidence that it happened on our first outing, but being told to turn left where you can’t — then being sent in a loop — doesn’t fill us with warm, fuzzy sensations. Still, the navigation is super intuitive and cleanly laid out, and even if there were major issues (which there really aren’t), it’s hard to knock a service that is completely free. We think a little more time and some longer trips will help put it in better perspective, but we like what we’ve seen so far.

Minor issues? The software told you “to turn left where you can’t — then being sent in a loop –” and this is just a minor issue? Oh yeah It’s Google, it’s beta, it’s free so it’s good enough..sure. Oh Well.

What I got from the review is:

-The hardware is solid and feels good in the hand
-The camera sucks
-The device is faster that previous Android phones (normal given the chipset used)
–Android 2.0 added some nice features that were already available in previous Android phones like the HTC Hero (Social media integration, Exchange support..)
-The Android 2.0 UI still looks old but gets a pass because it’s Google (if it was Symbian or WinMo it would get panned…)
– The only “new” feature in Android 2.0 is Google Navigation, it doesn’t always work right but gets a free pass because it’s Google, it’s Beta and free…
– Still no multi-touch support

Source: Engadget